


i love to hate you (and hate to love you)

by orphan_account



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguity, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 05:32:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12834354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jack has pretty eyes and a prettier laugh.Reaper is angry and conflicted.And what else is new?





	i love to hate you (and hate to love you)

**Author's Note:**

> That 'ambiguity' tag is not a joke, man. This is disgustingly non-explanatory. So have it like this, I'm not gonna explain any more of it here.

It is like there are two of him. At least.

There is the Reaper he should be. The one everyone knows him as. The one who can materialize behind you in a second and the only warning you’ll get is an animalistic growl in your ears before a shotgun blasts your back open. The Talon operative who is the most terrifying thing on this Earth because while the rest of them are organic, human, nobody can be sure that Reaper isn’t a real ghost.

And then there’s the man who should have died a long time ago but who is stupidly good at surviving, stubborn and so damn resourceful. The man who was a hero, and maybe one day will be again.

And then, maybe, there is something inbetween. Corrupt and angry and jealous and most of all hurt, but still human under the smog that makes him. He tries to stamp that one down most of all simply because it disturbs him and he doesn’t like being disturbed.

Jack Morrison is a young man. Twenty-seven? No, younger. Reaper watches him in the corner of the bar. Why he is here, he does not know. Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe it’s reality. He has long since stopped trying -- or even wanting -- to understand how his curse and his blessing works. What it can do. If Lena could blink--

But no. There is no Lena. There is only Jack Morrison. Jack. (Jackie.) He is a fever under Reaper’s skin. Laughing and smiling that stupid, pearly white smile that has always gotten him everything he wants--

The glass in Reaper’s hand shatters. He barely flinches. He wishes it was Jack’s throat in his grip. He wishes it was Jack’s hips. He wishes he could shove those shards of glass into that vain face, into that pretty mouth that never was good for nothing except sweet-talking and ass-kissing and nagging when he did not want to talk sweet and kiss ass. He wants to see the blood trickle out of Jack’s mouth. Wants to push the man (boy) against a wall and lick away some of the redness, hurt his tongue on the shards still stuck in that perfect skin and stain that blonde hair with his own blood. And then he wants to turn Jack around and smash his face in the wall and coat his whole hand in the blood and--

It’s calculated when he clenches his fist shut and lets the shards dig into his skin. He loses the train of thought in the sting, his furious fantasy fading to the background and leaving behind only a disgusting throb of desire and rage in equal parts. Besides, Jack is talking to someone. Older, probably. Likely little more than an acquaintance. Somewhat familiar, probably a low-level soldier. Might have been under Reyes' supervision once upon an old story. Looks at Jack like at a piece of meat.

Jack laughs and Reaper forces himself up. The shards of glass lie on the table, bloody and sharp, and he wants to hear Jack’s chuckle, so the normal thing to do is to take the broken glass to the bar and get a new drink. This place is filled with odd people, people will look twice but not thrice at a man in a mask. Unless they think they, themselves, are odd, in which case they will never look, even if they want to. He hates all of these people, wishes he could just polish them off.

”...and he goes, that’s monkey business for you, and by God, I’ve never seen Ana laugh that hard but she was so tired and it was so unexpected, you see...” Jack laughs again. The man beside him laughs too but it’s fake. Reaper knows a fake smile, a fake laugh, when he sees one, even when it’s not on a face with brilliant blue eyes and no scars (which is so fucking unfair).

”A mojito,” Reaper says to the woman behind the bar. He doesn’t hear if there’s a reply: his ears are occupied by the chatter so close to him.

”...so hilarious, man,” the fake man says. ”Uh, sorry to ask, but could you go fetch my phone? I left it in my coat pocket and my leg...”

”Which is it?” Jack asks cheerfully.

”The blue one with white sleeves.” He smiles. His phone peeks out of his back pocket, but Jack cannot see it. ”I’ll watch your drink.”

Reaper wants to laugh as Jack, Jackie, golden Jack Boy Scout McPrettyface Morrison, gets up and heads to where the guy’s coat is hanging. What an idiot. How is it possible that he never got himself killed? How is it possible that he has survived as long as Reaper himself has? He hates the man. He watches the asshole sitting down fish something out of his pocket and sure enough, there it is, a packet of something white. There is a very convenient straw sticking out of Jack’s drink -- is that a fucking mojito _is that a fucking mojito_ \-- and the white powder dissolves easily into the drink as it is swirled in the glass. When Jack returns everything is as it should be and nobody has noticed. Except Reaper, of course. But he is pretty much nobody.

 

* * *

 

 

”Man, I think you’ve drank quite enough.” Jack seems like, to his credit, he has actually realized the point where he has fucked up. Sadly, he cannot do anything about it. Reaper sips his mojito and watches the man -- Henry, apparently, _Henry_ , what a normally boring but still stupid name for such a normally boring but still stupid man -- help Jack up. ”I’ll take you home, all right?”

Jack makes a sound that should really have been made a lot earlier in the evening ( _you ass-kissing, sweet-talking, naïve stupid wholesome all American idiotic fucking UN_ whore). Reaper lets a chuckle out into his drink, not sure who he is trying to convince that the rage isn’t swirling in his marred gut again.

He needs to see how this will turn out.

He gets up when the pair has made it to the door and almost through it.

It does not take long for Henry to start with the groping. Jack is too far gone to even stop it. He is not weak by any means, but Henry clearly has not done this before because Jack is not just a little bit out of it, he is slipping fast out of consciousness, and there is not way a man his size can be dragged anywhere if he is not cooperating at all. Reaper lets his laughter out in the open.

Henry starts and Jack slumps against a wall, too tired to even raise his head.

”What an idiot you are, Jackie,” Reaper says. ”Letting a moron like this drug you.”

”I didn’t--” Henry starts.

”I saw you, hijo de tu puta madre. Shut your mouth, I’m talking to Jackie.”

”I never--”

Reaper pulls out his guns, or more like creates them out of the smog that creates him. Henry’s yelp is cut short by a shotgun blast. When he turns to Jack and looks him deep in the half-lidded ( _gorgeous blue glimmering soft deep_ ) eyes. Henry’s body falls to the ground, his face now a mess of blood and cartilage, and Reaper catches Jack as he topples.

”I’m taking you home, pinche idiota.”

 

* * *

 

 

When he has Jack in his arms and is carrying him to where he remembers (still remembers, still recalls, it is in his muscle memory) Jack lives, he is full again. Not half Reaper and half something else, something that should have been forgotten a long ago. He is full and he has the man he adores and admires and hates and despises in his arms completely limp and vulnerable and he doesn’t want to hurt, he wants to heal, he wants to protect. He wants to help. He wants to love.

He is sitting next to a sleeping Jack beside the bed. His shotguns are still at his waist. It doesn’t matter, anyway, he can get them at a moment’s notice wherever they are because he is nothing but a cloud of materia.

Smoke touches Jack’s cheek. Jack’s eyes flutter. Reaper cannot stop watching.

In the morning it is different. In the morning he will leave before Jack can wake up. In the morning he will be fully something else. But for now, Gabriel is fighting tooth and nail and he is content to let that happen. This is not a war that is ever going to have a winner, after all. Jack twitches in his sleep and his mouth falls open, and before he can stop, the smoke is there, caressing the thin lips.

In the morning, he promises himself. In the morning he will continue hating. For now, he will just watch and wait.


End file.
